A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  No, a sterner voice cautioned him. Do the judge first. Save this one for later.

  With an inaudible sigh he left the girl to her dreams. She lifted one hand to brush something from her eyes, then tugged her covers closer and turned away from him, burying her cheek deeper into her pillow. He watched her for a moment, then crept back into the hall beyond.

  The old judge slept differently from her pretty young guard. Wurth opened her door to snoring so loud that he had to rush in, lest all the racket rouse the sleeping bodyguard from her dreams. Then he realized that the racket came not from Judge Hannah, but from the broad-shouldered man who slept with his arms wrapped around her. Though no pistol hung from the bedpost here, Wurth knew he was in much more danger. Double the number of hostile eyes, reduce your chances accordingly.

  Silently he skirted the male sleeper and crept toward the judge. Unlike her young friend, she slept in pajamas; her face turned toward her lover. Her hair was a cloud of silver, and though she smiled in her sleep, there was a strong Anglo-Saxon thrust to her jaw that no doubt gave every defendant in her courtroom pause. She looked of average height and weight, with a neck surprisingly straight for someone her age.

  She moaned once in her sleep, then nestled closer to the whiskery fellow beside her, tucking her head just beneath his chin.

  Wurth sheathed his knife and withdrew a loaded syringe from his pocket. This was perfect. She would feel a single tiny pinprick, then, fifteen seconds later, her heart would seize, then stop. She would die in her own home, in her own bed, nestled in the arms of her lover. Wurth smiled. Most old people would give anything to go like that. He uncapped the syringe and leaned over to inject the poison into the woman’s flesh, then he stopped. With his needle poised just inches from its target, David Forrester’s twisted body flashed before him. He heard the thud of a baseball bat slamming into his kneecaps, another one crushing his skull. Then he heard someone gasping in pain, then a single agonized cry that shrieked up to heaven. No, he suddenly decided, looking down at the sleeping judge. David had not gotten to die like this. Why should this woman be allowed to go so easily?

  Moving like a magician skilled in sleight of hand, he recapped the syringe and returned it to his pocket. With a single step backward from the bed, he crept into the shadows and padded around the edges of the room, noting with a tiny penlight the books by her bed, the papers on her desk, the business cards by her telephone. By the time he circled to her bedroom door again, he’d learned everything he’d needed to know.

  Sleep well, Judge Hannah, he silently bade her as he slipped back out into the darkened hall. Enjoy your dreams. Someday soon, we’ll meet again.

  CHAPTER 16

  The raucous honk of a goose woke Mary up. She opened her eyes, for an instant unable to place herself in time and space; then she heard a horse neigh outside and downstairs, the slamming of a cabinet door. Yesterday was Christmas, she remembered. Last night she’d slept in her old room at Upsy Daisy—tucked into the narrow bed beneath the eaves, snuggled beneath a blue patchwork quilt. Lifting her head from her pillow, she saw her Beretta hanging over the end of the bed like a gunfighter’s in some Hollywood western. First Christmas I’ve ever spent armed, she thought.

  She threw the quilt off and padded to the bathroom, the hardwood floor frigid under her bare feet. Her thighs and buttocks felt like liquid fire, and every joint below her waist seemed to have been glued into one position. At first she wondered if she wasn’t coming down with some kind of flu, then she remembered they’d ridden horses yesterday. All over the farm and up into the woods behind the pasture they’d galloped, the horses making long puffs of steam with their breath in the bright, cold air. Afterward Hugh had concocted some kind of turkey hash for dinner and opened a bottle of Irish whiskey. They’d roasted potatoes in the fire, then moved into the living room, where Irene had played her piano long into the night, Lucy honking a laughable accompaniment from the porch. Irene ran through her classical repertoire, then Hugh passed around the bottle and they’d sung songs and carols until Mary’s eyelids drooped. Although she’d forgone the whiskey in an effort to stay awake, she’d stumbled up to bed exhausted, falling asleep to a sweet, slurred version of “Danny Boy.”

  Now she had an entirely different Danny boy on her mind. If Agent Daniel Safer could see her now, he would be furious. Bodyguards don’t encourage their charges to drink whiskey. Bodyguards stay awake. Bodyguards know where their clients are at all times.

  “Oh, shut up, Safer,” Mary grumbled aloud as she flushed the toilet. “Irene’s perfectly all right. No harm done.” Better not let it happen again, an inner voice scolded her as she winced at her reflection in the mirror and brushed her teeth with cinnamon-flavored toothpaste.

  She pulled on her jeans and a thick wool sweater and then clumped noisily down the stairs, lest she interrupt another tryst by the fire. When she reached the kitchen, however, only Irene was there, sitting at the table, reading the business section of the newspaper.

  “Morning.” Mary yawned, blinking at the dull light that licked at the windows. “What time is it? Where’s Hugh?”

  “Six A.M.” Irene looked up from her paper and smiled. “He’s delivering flowers in Raleigh. He’ll be gone till tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” Mary plopped down in the chair across from her. It had always made her sad that one day it was Christmas, and the next day it was business as usual. She guessed she liked her holidays to fade away gradually, rather than just end. “Thank you for a wonderful Christmas. I can’t remember when I had so much fun.”

  “It was fun, wasn’t it?” Irene stepped over to the stove and poured Mary a mug of coffee. “If Lady Jane would have had her foal, it would have been absolutely perfect.”

  “Have you checked on her this morning?”

  “Twice, already. She’s still pregnant. I’m on my way to the stable to feed everybody. You want to come along?”

  “Sure.” Mary gulped her coffee while Irene stepped into a pair of green Wellingtons and stashed a small thermos in her eiderdown jacket. “Just let me get my gun,” Mary said, draining her cup.

  “We’re only going to the barn.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be back in a flash.”

  She raced up the stairs, grabbed her holster, and strapped it on at the run. By the time she returned to the kitchen, Irene was halfway out the door, leading the way with her flashlight. The trees were just gray shapes in the mist, and the mountains looked like dark, sleeping giants. Mary smiled. Udusanuhi—the Old Men. Dakwai, Ahaluna, Disgagistiyi. Her mother’s people had named them well.

  “Do you remember who got fed what yesterday afternoon?” Irene flipped on the overhead lights when they reached the stable.

  “I think so.” Mary looked at the six equine heads that were peering at them over their stalls. “Spindletop, Banshee, and Stella get sweet feed and hay. Scooter and Dutchess get extra corn. I can’t remember what you gave Lady Jane.”

  “Pregnant mare chow.” Irene laughed. “Come on. The two of us can get this done fast.”

  She swung open a door to a room that contained several metal garbage cans full of grain. With Mary glancing at a cheat sheet tacked to the wall, the two women filled six different buckets with varying ratios of corn to oats. They delivered a bucket to each horse, along with a pailful of fresh water. As the rhythmic crunch of six horses serious about their food filled the barn, Irene sat on a bench beside the tack room and pulled the thermos from her vest.

  “I’m out of Lady Jane’s supplement,” she said. “I’ll have to pick up some more when I go into town.”

  “Did you say you were going back to Richmond on the fifth?”

  “Yep. We’re ruling on an ICC case that week. That’s why I want Lady Jane to hurry up and get on with it.”

  Mary knew better than to ask specifics; still, she couldn’t resist one more question. “This case isn’t a hot button for any lunatic fringe group, is it?”

  Irene chuckled. “No. In fact, on
January fifth the interstate trucking industry should send me roses.”

  “That’s a relief. I don’t know what I’d do if semis started chasing you.”

  Irene shook her head. “Mary, nobody’s going to come after me. I’m an old broad. My only claim to fame is being the lone liberal voice on the conservative Fourth Court.”

  “You’re an important jurist, Irene. You could be appointed to the Supreme Court.”

  The smile faded from Irene’s face. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “Nobody knows what it’s all about. That’s what makes it so scary.”

  They waited for the horses to finish, then turned out all but Lady Jane. While the mare stayed in the little paddock next to the stable, nuzzling at the tiny green shoots of clover that sprouted even in the winter, the others galloped up the hill like schoolchildren freed at recess.

  “They’ll graze up in the woods for the rest of the day, then come back here around sundown.” Irene smiled as the horses scattered up the hill. “See how totally not at risk we all are here?”

  Mary gazed up into the mountains that ringed the farm, hoping that Irene was right. When the horses had disappeared into the tree line, she helped Irene muck out the stalls, then they walked back to the house.

  “Are you going to work all day?” she asked as Irene slipped out of her boots by the kitchen door.

  “All morning,” she replied. “I’ve got a dental appointment at two. And I’d like to stop and get those vitamins for Lady Jane at the feed store.”

  “A dental appointment?” Mary frowned. Safer had showed her how to rip out someone’s eye, but he’d neglected to tell her what to do if Irene had to get a cavity filled.

  “I’ve put off getting a crown as long as I can.” She clacked her teeth together loudly. “I shouldn’t be gone more than a couple of hours, though. Maybe we can go for another ride when I get back.”

  “Would you mind if I came with you?” Mary rinsed her coffee cup in the sink, abruptly aware of the gun beneath her left arm.

  “To the dentist?” Irene looked mortified.

  Mary shrugged. “I’m sure that’s what Safer would want me to do.”

  “Well, okay. But if you bring that pistol, don’t let anyone see it. Dr. Moreland’s as old as I am. I don’t want him any shakier with that drill than he already is.”

  Mary washed out the coffee cups while Irene went to work on her opinion. She put Hugh’s mostly empty bottle of whiskey on top of the refrigerator and threw some stale biscuits out for Lucy. When she’d gotten the kitchen tidy again, she fixed a large pot of tea, remembering from her clerking days that Irene started the day with coffee, then switched at midmorning to Earl Grey tea. She smiled as she tapped on the door of the study, tea tray in hand.

  “Irene? Doyust zaditasti duli?” Impishly, she phrased her question in Cherokee, wondering how much Irene remembered.

  “I’d love some,” Irene called, laughing. She looked up as Mary opened the door. “Wahdo!”

  “Boy, I’m impressed. You’ve kept up!” Mary set the tray down on Irene’s desk.

  “Actually, it was a lucky guess,” admitted Irene. “Other than you, I don’t have anyone to speak Cherokee with.”

  “Me, neither.” Mary poured Irene a cup of tea, counting the people with whom she could speak the language her mother had so proudly taught her. Beyond Jonathan, who only knew about three phrases, Irene was the only one left. Unless, of course, she counted Ruth Moon, who probably spoke fluently and wrote in the syllabary as well. Too bad she had so little to say to Ruth Moon.

  “No Cherokees in Atlanta?” Irene asked as she took the cup Mary offered.

  “None have introduced themselves to me.” Mary poured herself some tea and walked over to one bookshelf. If Irene’s house was her favorite house in all the world, then Irene’s study was her favorite room. A massive rolltop desk sat on a faded sarouk carpet in the middle of the room, looking like a huge frog on a lily pad. The walls were covered floor to ceiling with bookcases, and the only spot not given to books was covered by an exquisite tapestry.

  Mary’s heart twisted as she looked at the weaving. She remembered the day she and her mother first met Irene Hannah. She’d come into Little Jump Off to buy fishing worms. Three hours later Irene and Martha Crow had become fast friends. The two women had discovered in each other a passion for books and art and the distaff mountain crafts—quilts and coverlets and the tapestries her mother wove. Her fishing trip forgotten, Irene Hannah had grinned at Martha with dancing brown eyes and declared, “I want you to weave me the mountains!” “But how big?” her mother had asked, flustered at Irene’s expansiveness. “Just like this,” Irene replied, spreading her arms wide.

  The next day Martha had started weaving. It had been spring, and Mary and Jonathan had discovered a nest of wood ducks in the reeds beside the river. Six months later, as the grown-up ducks headed south for Florida, her mother finished it. Then Federal District Judge Irene Hannah had written out a check for a thousand dollars. It was the most money Martha Crow had ever earned for a piece of work. After Irene had driven away with the tapestry in the backseat of her Mercedes, Mary and her mother had piled into their old Chevy and splurged on a steak dinner in town. Christmas had been more than abundant that year, and Mary did not see the worry lines in her mother’s face again until the next spring.

  “That piece just goes on forever, doesn’t it?” Irene’s voice broke the comfortable silence of the room.

  “Every time I see it I’m amazed all over again.”

  “Your mother was an extraordinary artist. She should have been rich and famous.” Irene’s funny caned-back swivel chair squeaked as she turned around. “Do you paint much anymore?”

  “A little. I brought a set of pastels with me. Maybe you and Lady Jane could pose.”

  Irene looked up at her. “Do you ever regret my hauling you out of the studio and into the courtroom?”

  Mary thought of the dark, brackish paintings she’d produced her first two years in college, after her mother’s murder. “No.” She smiled. “I’m a pretty good prosecutor. As an artist, I would have starved.”

  While Irene turned back to her work, Mary moved around the room, looking at Irene’s books, smiling at the various mementos among her legal tomes. A Japanese tea set, a Cherokee dream catcher, pictures—Phoebe on a Shetland pony, William in his Navy uniform, even a small snapshot of her, resplendent in her Emory gown, lifting her law school diploma in triumph.

  When she came to a small cast-iron statue of a tree with six wedding rings dangling from the branches, she began to laugh.

  “Remember Reuben Loveless? The guy with six wives?”

  Irene nodded. “I sure do. Married six women without bothering to divorce a one. As I recall, five of the Mrs. Lovelesses were mighty pissed. The sixth one thought Reuben was just misunderstood.” She turned to Mary and raised one eyebrow. “Remember the state of North Carolina versus Marcus Stephens?”

  “Oh, lord, yes.” Mary’s cheeks flushed. “My first case to research. North Carolina real estate codes. I pored over those books for days.”

  “It was brilliant research,” said Irene. “Too bad you just weren’t looking in the latest books. . . .”

  Mary shook her head. “I’m still mortified by that. You would have ruled for Stephens and been overturned in a heartbeat. And it would have been all my fault!”

  “You were a kid.” Irene laughed. “And I caught the error in time. Believe me, honey, worse legal errors have been made by grayer heads than yours.”

  “Thus ended my career as a dirt lawyer,” said Mary.

  “Honey, you were a criminal prosecutor right out of the gate. Anything less would have bored you.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun as when I clerked for you in Asheville.”

  Irene chuckled. “You got a good education. We heard everything—murder, arson, kidnapping, embezzlement.”

  “Bigamy,” added Mary.

 
“Ah, yes. I’ve still got most of those old files in my hall closet.” She took a sip of her tea, then set the cup back in its saucer with a clatter. “You know, I remember seeing an old file of your mother’s in that closet, a couple of months ago.”

  Mary looked at her, stunned. “You have a file of my mother’s?”

  “Yes. As I remember, it’s nothing more than a transfer of deed and some letters she wanted to keep safe.”

  “Some letters?” Mary frowned. Other than her husband, Jack, all Martha’s friends had been local, people she saw every day. She would have no need to write a letter to any of them.

  “I think so.” Irene looked at the papers on her desk. “How about I dig it out as soon as we come back from the dentist? I need to get back to work right now.”

  Mary wanted to ask if she could just get the file herself, but she said nothing. It would be a terrible breach of professional courtesy to rifle through another attorney’s files.

  “That’d be terrific,” she said instead. She put her empty teacup down on the tray and left the study to Irene and her opinion, wondering what kind of files her mother’s small, sad life could have left behind, and amazed that today, after thirteen years, she would soon find out.

  CHAPTER 17

  Sergeant Wurth had not been joking when he said serious work would begin after Christmas. Cabe had rolled out of his cot at 0700 hours, putting his glasses on with the crazy hope that Willett had returned. But the adjoining bed still sat empty, its unmussed linens tucked tight beneath the mattress. With a sad emptiness spreading inside him, Tommy ate cold cereal with his fellow Grunts, then reported in front of the castle at 0800. It was clear by the way Sergeant Wurth strode up and down in front of them that Christmas at Camp Unakawaya was over.

  Yesterday it had been impossible to sneak down to AR. With all the Troopers prowling around in festive high spirits, it had been all Cabe could do to avoid Tallent and Grice. Ultimately he’d sneaked back up to the cave. He’d squeezed through the bars, grabbed the stolen flashlight, and threaded his way back to Willett’s den. The four remaining cans of Coke and the photo of Tarheel remained where Willett had left them. Holding his breath, Tommy had thrust his hand inside the fissure that hid Willett’s secret weapon, hoping wildly that his friend had escaped and was right at that very moment at some police station, loading those files onto a cop computer. But when his fingers curled around the plastic-covered disk, Cabe’s heart sank. Willett was still somewhere at Camp Unakawaya. He would never have made a break for it without his disk. And anyway, Willett never would have left him without saying good-bye.